


a thing like that

by macsdennis



Category: Mad Men
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Post-Series, Set in 1978
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25487965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macsdennis/pseuds/macsdennis
Summary: “Peggy? Peggy Olson?”A strangely familiar voice coming from behind got her attention. Did he call her Peggy Olson? She hadn’t been called Peggy Olson in almost six years. Turning around, Peggy was suddenly looking straight into the eyes of a smallish, balding man, who had a perplexed look on his face that seemed out of place with the smirk his mouth had formed.Pete Campbell.
Relationships: Peggy Olson & Pete Campbell, Peggy Olson/Stan Rizzo
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

“Mike! Get your shoes on, honey.”

The lack of reply or noise coming from the child’s room made Peggy sigh. She put the Easter shopping list down on the kitchen counter and quickly trotted through the apartment, poking her head around Michael’s door, where he was sat engaged in some mysterious task with toys that only made sense to a five-year-old brain.

“Michael. Shoes.”

“Why do I need shoes, Mommy?” Michael seemed genuinely curious, his big brown eyes that looked so much like Stan’s wide and wondering. Peggy was struck, as she often was, with a completely unexpected and almost painful burst of love for her son. She briefly remembered a time where she and Stan had agreed they didn’t want kids, which was very quickly followed by an unexpected and terrifying pregnancy that had changed both of their lives so much for the better. 

However, she was irritated, rushed, and desperately needed to make sure Michael was ready for his hastily-arranged play date with Kevin.

“Because you do, now get them on your feet! Daddy’s going to drive you over to Auntie Joan’s house.” 

Michael smiled placidly and started painstakingly lacing up his little shoes. Stan had taught Mike how to do a basic bow recently, and insisted that Peggy not rush to do it for him and let him practice. Peggy watched him, smiling slightly to herself, until she felt two large hands gently rest on her shoulders. She leaned back into her husband and shut her eyes, sighing, as his beard scratched the back of her neck. 

“Are you sure you don’t need me to pick up the groceries?” Stan mumbled into her hair. “It won’t take long to drop Mikey off, I can go straight to the store. You should really rest up.”

“I want to get out of the house.” Peggy turned around in Stan’s arms and faced him, looking up into the slightly worn face that she knew so well. “Wait until I’m at least six months in to start waiting on me hand and foot, okay?”

“Christ, I’m not looking forward to when you have to go on maternity leave again.” Stan chuckled lowly. “I was scared you’d burn the apartment down just for something to do, you were so bored.”

“Well, I won’t be quite so tempted when we get the new house.” Peggy smiled sweetly and leaned up to kiss Stan, feeling her slowly growing bump press against his belly. “Joan’s excited to see Michael. Give her my love, won’t you? And make sure you give her that Easter card.”

“You’re so Catholic.” 

“My Mom would love to hear you say that.”

“I’d never give her the satisfaction.” 

Peggy grinned, leaned up and kissed him chastely. “I’m expecting freshly brewed coffee when I get back with the shopping.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Stan peered looked over the top of Peggy’s head to Michael, who was stood, polite and adorable, in his best clothes and shoes neatly laced. “Come on, champ. Aunt Joanie and Kev are waiting. Say bye to Mommy.”

“Bye, Mommy.”

Peggy squatted down, and Michael wrapped his short arms around her neck. “Have a lovely time. I’ll get some treats for Easter Sunday tomorrow, does that sound good?”

“Yeah.”

“Bye, sweetie.” 

Michael slipped his little hand into his father’s big paw. Stan gave Peggy one last kiss on the forehead and left the apartment; Peggy could hear Michael giggling at something Stan said as they went down the stairs. 

She looked at the shopping list; it covered both sides of the paper.

“Goddammit.” 

*

The streets of Manhattan were heaving with people, as usual. The sun was bright, warming Peggy’s face as she stepped out of the crowded grocery store, sweating slightly under her short print dress. No way was she going to start wearing those horrible maternity clothes this early, like Stan had suggested. That was not happening. 

As excited as she was to have another kid, Peggy Olson hated being pregnant. She goddamn hated it. The first time, the time that was pushed to the back of her mind and never released from the strongbox, she hadn’t even noticed, which seemed bizarre to her now.

When she was pregnant with Michael, the first trimester had been a breeze. This is easy! her and Stan had stupidly laughed. They should have more kids afterwards, hundreds more! She wasn’t even getting that big! She had no cravings! She could wear all the same clothes! Of course she could stay at work for the whole pregnancy, of course she would hardly need any time off! 

Fools.

Soon enough, Peggy’s breasts had ballooned, her skin had stretched and cracked, her back had started to ache like a bitch, her hair had thinned and her feet looked like swollen hams. It was everything that had happened when she was twenty-one, except this time she knew there was another human growing in her body, sapping all of her resources. Maternity leave had left her bored and restless. She had spent many a night just before Michael was born crying into Stan’s stomach, cursing herself for her vanity over her body and apologising to her husband for being so silly. Stan wouldn’t have a bar of it - he always reassured his wife that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, even more beautiful for creating a tiny mix of the two of them. Peggy tried to believe him, she really did; but when she looked at her puffy face, saggy boobs and huge stomach, she found it difficult. 

Everything had changed when Michael was born, however. He was her world, her sun and moon, her everything. She and Stan would spend hours upon hours simply lying on the bed, staring at their son, unable to fathom what they had created. 

Peggy knew in her heart that she would feel that way again when Michael’s little brother or sister was born. But she found it a struggle to remember that when she was hauling five grocery bags out of the shop into the sun, five months worth of pregnancy making her back hurt and her movements stilted. In the second trimester, her bump was hardly big enough to be seen, merely stretching the fabric of her loose dress out slightly. But, Goddammit, did her back kill. 

The dress was stuck to her lower back and her short hair kept falling into her eyes as she struggled against a tide of people in the street. Maybe she should have asked Stan to get the shopping, or at least to come and pick her up. 

Usually, when grocery shopping, Peggy ran into a couple of people she knew. I mean, in a city of seven million people, of course you would. However, this time, the only person she had seen was a young woman who looked strangely familiar, with a young man who looked not-so familiar. Peering at her from the fruit and vegetable aisle, Peggy had realised with a small shock that the woman was Sally Draper, tall and slim in a pair of startlingly orange bell-bottoms, languidly chewing gum and choosing things for the youth by her side to put in their basket. Sally must be, what? At least twenty, if not twenty-one by now. Of course Peggy knew what had happened to Betty - a travesty - but it seemed as though Betty had passed her spirit through to Sally. Once a childish little girl, running away, sat in a too-big chair in her father’s office, shouting back at a frustrated Peggy, Sally looked aloof and cold and beautiful, languidly chewing gum and gazing around the shop with heavily made-up eyes. 

Peggy had caught her eye as she was leaving and waved awkwardly, the bags weighing her down. Sally had stopped chewing and waved back vaguely; Peggy knew that she would most likely place her much later on, and probably tell her Dad. 

If they still spoke, that was. 

She was so deep in thought, remembering the times that Sally had come to the office, that Peggy hardly noticed the small man barrelling towards her, looking like he was being pulled along by his briefcase, until he bumped into her.

“Oh, excuse me.”

Peggy cursed herself for being so weak, apologising to the retreating back of a man who pushed past her, before bitterly thinking that it wouldn’t have helped anyway if she were to have said anything. Everyone seemed to be in her way, even as she turned into the slightly quieter street. At least she was only a couple of blocks away from the apartment, where she could drop the bags and kiss her husband have a proper coffee and put up her feet and-

“Peggy? Peggy Olson?”

A strangely familiar voice coming from behind got her attention. Did he call her Peggy Olson? She hadn’t been called Peggy Olson in almost six years. Turning around, Peggy was suddenly looking straight into the eyes of a smallish, balding man, who had a perplexed look on his face that seemed out of place with the smirk his mouth had formed. 

Pete Campbell.

He was still ageing badly, Peggy could see. In the eight years that Peggy had not seen him, Pete had lost almost all of the rest of his hair, the hairline receding far back on his skull. His eyes had more lines around them, and the paunch around his stomach was slightly noticeable in his business shirt. But there was still, as there always had been, some of that boyish charm about him, a small glimpse of the young, hungry man that she had met all those years ago, when she was simply The New Girl. 

“Wow. Wow, Pete.”

He smiled, that damn annoying smile. Peggy couldn’t help but smile back. “It’s...” he paused for a second, shaking his head slightly. “It’s really great to see you, Peggy. You look great.”

“Thank you. So do you.”

“Oh, come off it.” Pete waved his free hand good-naturedly. “You don’t have to be nice to me, I know I look like an old man.” 

“No, no.” Peggy said vaguely. She could feel herself smiling, but her face felt numb. “What are you doing in Manhattan? I thought you moved to... was it Missouri?”

“Wichita, in Kansas.” Pete dropped his briefcase by his feet. Hardly anyone was walking past on the street now, oddly enough. Peggy couldn’t take her eyes off his face - puffy and lined, but still somehow young. “Trudy and I have a lovely place in the suburbs, with lots of families around so Tammy has enough friends to play with and, well, go shopping and everything. You know how young girls are with their shopping.” He had such a boyish grin on his face when talking about his family that Peggy couldn’t help but break her smile into a grin as well.

“How old is Tammy, now?”

“She’s just turned fourteen. She’s beautiful, I have a picture actually, hold on...”

Pete fumbled around, trying to find his wallet in the inside pocket of his suit. The suit was a dark blue, reminding Peggy of the one he was so fond of back in the early sixties. She could see a light sheen of sweat on his almost bald head. 

“Here,” he held out his wallet. A slightly faded picture of a young girl with masses of dark hair looked up at Peggy. She looked elegant and demure, the absolute spit of Trudy. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”

“Yes, wow. She’s beautiful.”

“Takes after her mother with the hair,” Pete chuckled, lightly tapping himself on the head. “And hopefully it’ll stay that way.” 

“So, why Manhattan?” Peggy repeated. 

“Oh, a business trip. I’m still in advertising, co-managing a little company over in Wichita. Nowhere near the size of where we used to work, but it’s a good, honest job. Trudy’s started a dress-making business, it’s taken the city by storm!” 

Peggy smiled again. She couldn’t believe how... happy he was. How content and relaxed. This Pete Campbell seemed a million miles away from the snide, wound-up little boy she used to know. 

“How rude of me!” Pete laughed again, moving away slightly from a woman with a pram. “How are you doing, anyway? Where are you working?”

As she opened her mouth, Peggy suddenly sagged slightly under the weight of the shopping. Pete immediately lurched forward to catch her, and an image of Lois driving that stupid tractor around the office flashed in her brain, fainting into Pete’s arms at the sight of all that blood. She almost laughed. 

“Let me take your bags.” Pete moved them away from Peggy and hoisted them into his arms. “Would you like to go and have a...”

He trailed off. Peggy looked down and realised that the bags had been covering her slightly protruding stomach. 

There was a small smile on Pete’s face. 

“It seems like we have a lot to catch up on,” he said softly. “I’m free for about an hour until my train to the airport comes. Would you like to go for a coffee?”


	2. Chapter 2

Peggy had to give it to Pete, he was a much nicer man than he was when she first met him.

The Pete she knew in the early sixties would have offered to carry her grocery shopping, sure, but only if he thought there was something in it for him. A flirtation, a kiss. A quickie on the sofa.

She hadn’t thought about Pete Campbell in years; sure, occasionally Peggy would see a teenage boy walking past with dark hair and a small nose, or perhaps a familiar smirk and swaggering gait, and the breath would catch in her throat and she would briefly wonder if that was him, the product of that strange time in her life that Pete had flitted in and out of. Then she would walk past and put it from her mind, shoving it in the mental strongbox of never-visited memories.

Like she had said to Stan: it wasn’t her son. Her only son was Michael.

“So,” Pete slid into the chair opposite her, placing two cups of steaming coffee down on the wooden table. “I shouldn’t call you Peggy Olson anymore, right?” A quick, polite nod to her wedding ring, her stomach.

“Yes, it’s Peggy Rizzo now.” Peggy almost relished the look of surprise that took over Pete’s face.

“Really? Stan Rizzo?” He shook his head, grinning. “Well, I’ll be damned. I always thought you two would be good together.”

“Really?”

“Yes, honestly. And now you’re married, and a creative director, just like I said you would be.” He took her in, looking strangely proud. Peggy almost blushed. “Well how about that. And a kid on the way.”

“Our second, actually.” Peggy felt warm as she spoke, Michael’s sticky little smiling face in her mind’s eye. “Michael’s five years old now.”

Pete didn’t speak. He looked almost bemused, but pleased.

“He was an accident, our Michael. Stan was terrified. We weren’t even married when I got pregnant.” She saw Pete’s face change minutely when she said the pregnancy was accidental, and immediately knew where his mind had jumped to. “He was a happy accident, though.”

“The best accidents are happy ones.”

A silence. The coffee shop was fairly empty; Peggy could hear Pete’s foot tapping rapidly against the floor, a habit he still had, reminiscent of the tightly-wound young man he used to be, roaming around Sterling-Cooper, even before the name became impossibly long.

“He’d be almost eighteen now. I think.”

Pete was looking down, speaking into his lap. Absurdly, bizarrely, Peggy thought that if she shined the top of his head, she could probably see herself. Then she brought herself back to earth, back to Manhattan, and looked at the man sat in front of her, once an enemy, then a lover, then a friend, now a stranger.

“Do you think about him?” Peggy’s voice was quiet.

“Sometimes.” Pete replied, just as softly. “Not as often as I used to. After you told me...” He broke off, looked up at her. “After you told me, I felt like screaming until my lungs ripped. It didn’t feel fair, that we could have had something wonderful and it never happened. But... now, obviously, I know that you and I would never have worked. It wasn’t meant to be.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Peggy suddenly felt like crying. Pregnancy hormones, it had to be the pregnancy hormones. “We made stupid choices back then, both of us. But now, we both have what we want. We’re both happy.”

And it wasn’t a lie. Pete was obviously contented in his suburban dreamworld, with a beautiful wife, a lovely daughter, a job he enjoyed. And Peggy... Peggy loved Stan, with all of her being. She was too cynical to believe in soulmates, and Stan thought the word was too mushy, anyway, but privately she knew that Stan was her one and only. Through the arguments, the slammed doors, the grey hairs in his beard, the lines on her face, they were part of each other, the same being. The mundane, day-to-day stresses of city living with a family, trying to buy a new house, holding down a demanding job with a young child and another on the way - it was all worth it, Peggy knew, because she had the love of her life by her side.

“You know,” she smiled, stirring her coffee. “I used to kid myself that you and I could get married. I thought about it a lot, after we slept together the first time. I knew that you had Trudy and wouldn’t seriously want to marry me, but I used to think that if only you realised I was the right girl for you, you would leave her and come to me.” She looked up. “And you would have, wouldn’t you?”

Pete stayed silent, his jaw slightly slack.

“But we were so young, Pete. I was so young and naive. I even tried to seduce Don when I first started. You and I... if it had been a different time, a different year, it could have worked. But...” she paused. She could say this now; there was so much behind them, and so little between them now, in the present, that it was okay. “It’s a good thing that we never worked, Pete. It’s a very good thing.”

Pete didn’t speak for a few moments. He sipped his coffee, not looking at her, and for a horrible moment, Peggy thought that he might confess his love for her again, transporting her back to the sofa in the dark office back in that horrible building. Then he put his mug down, looked straight at Peggy, and smiled slightly sadly.

“A thing like that.”

_‘Someday, people are going to brag that they worked with you.’_  
_‘What am I supposed to say to that?’_  
_‘I don’t know. No one’s ever said it to me before.’_  
_‘A thing like that.’_

The breath caught in her throat.

Pete Campbell. Peggy didn’t think that anybody would ever truly understand her relationship with that man. She wasn’t even sure if she understood it herself. The last eight years had passed without him in her life, which she hardly even noticed. And now, here he was, sat in front of her, bald and overweight and so, so, Pete. Charming and smarmy and condescending and hard-working.

She laughed to herself slightly. “You know, I was just about to ask if you would come for dinner with me and Stan soon. But I don’t think we’re going to see each other again, are we?”

Pete shook his head slowly, that strange, sad little smile still on his face. “No. I don’t think we are.”

They both looked down simultaneously. Peggy hadn’t touched her coffee.

“Peggy?”

She looked up. He had leaned forward slightly across the table.

“Yes?”

“I think if our... if he turned out to be even half the person you are, I would be glad to know him. Eternally glad to know him.”

**Author's Note:**

> hi, this is my second mad men fic! feel free to go and read my previous one, it’s is a peggy/stan pregnancy fic, very fluffy and cute
> 
> this isn’t a pete/peggy fic - i think they are two of the most interesting characters with the best developments throughout the show, and i often find myself pondering what would happen if they met again in the future. so, this is set 8 years after the end of the final series. hope you enjoyed!
> 
> p.s. just to make myself sad, i decided that stan and peggy would name their first son after ginsberg :,)


End file.
